Ahh..vanilla. The warm, comforting aroma that instantly takes us back to those early childhood memories of baking cookies with mom and enjoying drippy cones of ice cream with friends. No other fragrance stirs up such vivid and heart-felt memories quite like vanilla...no wonder why most of us love it.

Since Vanilla is THE best selling fragrance on the market, I've been wanting to do something big to pay tribute to it for a while. I figured a BIG old vanilla comparison review with the help of my awesome candle amigo Christina would be fun. Well, I don't know if fun is the right word... "challenge" is more like it. I really like the smell of vanilla but it's not a favorite of Christina's, so before I go on let me just say :thank you, thank you" to my wonderful friend Christina, who sacrifices her time and nose so often for the good of CandleFind.  :-)

There are so many variations of vanilla, it's mind boggling. It makes sense though since every single candle company out there makes some sort of vanilla fragrance. To prepare for this review, Christina and I started gathering some info on the different types of straight vanilla scents out there. We found that plain vanillas can be very sweet, they can have floral tones, musky tones, carmel-like tones, some can smell perfumey and the list goes on and on. For this review, we were after that rich creamy, authentic smell of vanilla that warms your heart from the inside out and takes you right back to those special childhood memories.

Christina and I each put together a list of vanilla candles we wanted to try from some of the smaller companies we've discovered over the past few years as well as some bigger brands. We started off wanting to review about 5 vanilla scents each, but then kept adding more as time went on.  This is our BIGGEST review to date...we've reviewed 18 vanilla scents! The brands we've included are: AromaSoy by Grazia, Yankee, Pure Integrity, WoodWick (Old Virginia), Beanpod, Village Candle, Colonial at Home, SparklePuss, Candlelicious, Country Passion, Blue Moon, Spotted Hog, Kountry Lights and Gold Canyon. Wow, that's a lot!

After we burned a few of our vanilla candles and started writing about them, we both admitted to each other that trying to describe them seemed more difficult than all of the other reviews we've done in the past. Why? Well, I think it's because every single candle company out there makes a vanilla but they don't all smell exactly the same. Some differ oh-so slightly and trying to decipher those slight differences in each fragrance and put them down on paper has been quite the challenge. We're determined gals though and wanted to see this thing through to the end. If you're a vanilla fan and are looking for a new favorite vanilla candle, look no further than this review. As usual, you can count on us to help steer you in the right direction.

If you're a major CandleFind fan and want to read every word of our review, simply click here to start or on the "Continue Reading" link below.  My vanilla reviews are listed first and Christina's are after that.  If you don't feel like reading the whole review, feel free to jump around in the Table of Contents below... just click on a vanilla scent to read our thoughts on it.

Enjoy Vanilla Lovers!! :-)